


I Don't Recognize This Place

by Mackem



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Family, Friendship, Getting to Know Each Other, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 18:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11765781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mackem/pseuds/Mackem
Summary: Magnus, she recalls, was never the most ostentatious of people. While she and Taako made it their mission to drape themselves in the brightest clothing they could muster, standing resplendent with gaudiest of decorations, Magnus was content to eschew gilt in favour of looking as rough and rowdy as possible. As much of a magpie as she could be, Lup agreed that it suited him.Yet at some point in the past decade or so, Magnus apparently began wearing a ring. Just one, on his left fourth finger.





	I Don't Recognize This Place

**Author's Note:**

> Flipping heck, I've not posted anything since 2015, and suddenly I've been gripped with a (probably momentary, definitely misguided) urge to write again. Here I am rocking up in a new fandom with nothing but a few ficlets to hand. I've found myself a list of prompts and am doing my best to work through them as inspiration strikes. They won't be connected, and definitely won't be chronological, but I'm determined to Produce Some Content. Let's see how that goes!
> 
> The prompt for this fic was "ring". The title is from a Savage Garden song, of all things. Rating is purely due to a couple of swears.

Magnus, she recalls, was never the most ostentatious of people. While she and Taako made it their mission to drape themselves in the brightest clothing they could muster, standing resplendent with gaudiest of decorations, Magnus was content to eschew gilt in favour of looking as rough and rowdy as possible. As much of a magpie as she could be, Lup agreed that it suited him.

 

Yet at some point in the past decade or so, Magnus apparently began wearing a ring. Just one, on his left fourth finger.

 

Lup’s social skills are rusty after more than ten years without any real interaction, but her mind is not dulled enough to miss the implications of its location. She also knows Magnus Burnsides well enough to realise that if his spouse were still around, she’d have been gleefully introduced the very nanosecond that became possible. The Magnus she knows is not a person willing to be shy about those he adores.

 

But the hours after they defeat the Hunger turn to days, then weeks, and he remains silent on the subject. She sees him fiddle with the band absently, a habit he indulges whether relieved or miserable or brimming with glee, but still he offers no name, no tale, no explanation.

 

It frustrates her. It’s the same with all of her friends; she can recall them as they were twelve years ago, and she can see who they became while she was gone, but she has nothing to bridge the intervening years. Her friends are memories jammed up against strangers wearing familiar faces, with no way to twine the two together, and she wants to fix that.

 

One by one, she will know them again.

 

Still, she hesitates before asking Magnus his story. His heart is as big as his biceps, she thinks, but so much softer. Best to tread carefully.

 

She bides her time – she’s had no choice but to become good at that – and waits for the two of them to be alone together. When she drifts out onto the quad one evening and finds him by himself against a tree, nursing the dregs of a beer and wearing a dreamy smile as he watches Fisher float around the lawn with its baby darting ahead of it, she seizes the opportunity.

 

Lup settles beside him, amused that he makes room for her to lean against the tree beside him even though he knows she’d only pass through it, and gestures towards his left hand with a wave of her own. “So,” she begins, her voice soft in the still evening air. “Would I have liked ‘em?”

 

Magnus is not a stupid man, no matter what he’d say to the contrary. He looks confused for just a moment before the penny drops; his expression is equal parts warm and wistful as he toys with the worn golden band. “Yeah,” he murmurs, his eyes on the two voidfishes as they dance together, though she’s not entirely certain they’re what he’s seeing in that moment. “Yeah, you would. Everyone... everyone liked Julia.”

 

“Julia,” she echoes, rolling the words around her spectral mouth, and glances sideways at him. “Julia Burnsides, huh?”

 

“Yeah."

 

“Julia Burnsides,” she says again, and instinctively tries to nudge him in the ribs. He shivers as her elbow passes through him. “That sounds pretty good to me, homie.”

 

“Yeah,” he says again, and his voice is suddenly thicker than it had been seconds ago. “She was, Lup. She really was.”

 

Her heart sinks. Only a few words in, and already she's fucked it up. “Hey, Mags, I’m sorry,” she says hurriedly, but he’s already holding up his hand with a shake of his head.

 

“Don’t be,” he says, his mouth twisting in distaste. “She wouldn’t want you to be sorry just for _saying her name_. She’d want – god, now I, like, really know you all again? She’d want you to know _her_. She’d already be calling all of you her in-laws, I know it,” he says, with a watery smile. “You’d have a new sister, Lup.”

 

“Well, shit,” Lup says, shifting closer. She’s never been the most touchy-feely of people, but right now, when she wants to squeeze his shoulder and pull him against her, it sucks more than ever to be incorporeal. She settles for keeping her voice warm as she murmurs, “If it's what she'd want, why don’t you tell me all about this sister from another mister? I'd love to know her," she says.

 

And by the end of it, she really feels like she does. Magnus is not the most eloquent of speakers, but he's nothing if not effusive; he talks for hours, filling the cooling night air with stories about his beloved wife, and all she'd meant to him, and to their town. Lup feels like she could draw an accurate portrait of Julia by the time Magnus' voice dries up and he's left flopping wearily against the tree. He seems minutes away from dozing off after laying his heart so thoroughly bare for her, so Lup decides her thousands of questions can wait for another time.

 

She can't help him back to his room - that would've been a frustrating endeavour even when she had a body - so she remains at his side instead, keeping an eye on him as he falls asleep propped against the tree.

 

His fingers remain resting on the ring throughout.

 

Lup does the best job she can of leaning back beside Magnus, and lets her thoughts drift over the woman who gave it to him, and the man she helped him become.

 

She can't say she truly knows that man, yet; this Magnus who rallied an entire town behind him, and lost every one of them to a tragedy he can't seem to explain. Perhaps she was expecting too much of a single conversation. But, she thinks as she looks at the ring on his finger, she feels closer to it.

 

Now she knows his heart. The rest can come later.

 


End file.
